在Microsoft Workflow Foundation中晃荡了两天

很久之前就为VS2005打了WF，但最初的想法是很单纯，以为就像VS创建一个Windows应用程序一样，创建WF也一样拖拖控件，一句代码也不用写就可以完成，但实际操弄起来，发现完全不是这么一回事，虽然WF的designer非常图形化，但要与host application之间，还是需要写一些代码才可以完成得了。

这几天又来了冲动，要学学到底WF是什么一个东西。周末在家里就捣鼓了两天，才慢慢有了一些头绪。看看Paul Andrew (Microsoft .NET Framework Product Manager for WF and WCF) 怎么描述WF的：

WF is a software developer technology

• It's the programming model, engine and tools for building workflow-enabled software on Windows
• It gives software developers a model driven tool which is higher level but still integrated with .NET code
• It's seriously extensible to enable a wide range of software development projects that require process execution or business logic execution
• It's targetted at Independand Software Vendors (ISVs) both Microsoft products and external product developers. We spend a lot of time planning the features for this audience
• It's been successfully used by many MS products and customer projects despite only being released in Nov 2006

WF is not a software product

• It doesn't have a server process that you can directly run in a data center, you have to build this or integrate with IIS
• It doesn't have administrative tools, reporting tools, management tools or monitoring tools. We have some samples for these that you can work into your softwareproducts
• The workflow designer is best suited to developers, not business analysts. Though I have heard of some projects using our designer with a business analyst buddying with a software developer and our designer is freely redistributable.
• It doesn't have tools that IT Pros need or end users need. It's focussed only on what software developers need.

 从MSDN中的WF Tutorials学起，将Sequential和State Machine操练了一遍，再下了Kenn Scribner的WF Step By Step，呵呵，看看能不能沿着大师们的脚步来学习WF。